May 9, 2014 AT 2:00 pm

Skip commercials using Raspberry Pi #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

R D Milligan uploaded this great tutorial using his Raspberry Pi and facial recognition software to skip commercials, or “adverts” 🙂

Arkwood loves watching the Dave Channel on his TV set, but hates having to sit through the adverts. ‘Don’t fret,’ I told my seedy Belgian buddy, ‘I’ll write some python code on my Raspberry Pi which will send you an alert when the adverts have ended.’

It wasn’t too difficult to do. First I attached a webcam to my Pi and took a snap of the Dave emblem, the image the channel always uses to signal a TV show is about to start. Here it is captured on Arkwood’s TV set:

Great. Now all we need to do is configure the webcam to take a snap of the TV a few times a second, and as soon as it finds a close match to the Dave emblem we can alert Arkwood…

We use Pygame to play a cymbal sound though a set of speakers attached to the Pi, to let my friend know his TV show is about to start.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

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